Worship that was sweet!

My worship class celebrated the entire Three-Day Feast of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and The Easter Vigil all in one day this past Saturday. It was a wonderful exploration of the possibilities embedded within this holy celebration. Creativity reigned as each small group presented their portion of the celebration. My own group had the responsibility for the final portion of the Easter Vigil, including a baptismal remembrance and celebration of the Lord's supper. Check out the photo (taken by Mary Stoneback, one of my classmates). The last supper icon belongs to my friend Ethan Hulme and we hauled it into this building (the oldest Lutheran church in MN). Lit only by candlelight, the gold foil painting absolutely glowed. I have to say, it was pretty cool.

In order to highlight the celebratory nature of this final Eucharist, our group decided to use intentionally sweet bread and wine. Coming from the bitter & sour and into the sweet seemed the perfect movement from death into life.

We served a nicely sticky cinnamon bread baked by local St. Paul bakery "A Toast to Bread." Believe it or not, we found it at Tim & Tom's Speed Market, just across the street from Luther Seminary.

The wine was a locally-grown Chambucier from Falconer Vineyards in Red Wing Minnesota. Here's a photo of me and Ethan meeting the winemakers, John & Anne Falconer.

Perhaps one of the best highlights from the worship service occurred just following the sending when there was a mad dash for the altar as everyone tried to grab another taste of bread and swallow of wine. That's a theological moment I can really sink my teeth into!

Does salvation make a difference?

Full confession: I'm struggling with salvation. Well not all of salvation, just some of it. I believe in Jesus and I believe in Jesus as savior, or as the bookish theologians put it, "the benefit of Christ is salvation." But what does salvation mean. That's where my struggle is.

Let's try defining salvation by examining what it does. As best I can tell, salvation fixes/heals/mends/makes whole the human condition. I can agree that I'm not perfect and I can easily make that claim about you. Fine, I can support a claim about salvation that attempts to address these imperfections or brokenness. But what is so broken about death and why do we fear it so much that the thought of overcoming death is central to our understanding of and need for salvation? Sure, there are plenty of tragic elements wrapped up with death and great is our desire to mitigate tragedy. But that's not always the case. Sometimes death is a blessing. But that's not my problem.

My problem is that salvation has to be about life after death and not so much about life before death. Why do some theologians want to dismiss the trans formative power of taking up all my broken bits and reassembling them now? What if that were to happen over and over again, and not with just me but with everyone around me? And what if someone, now made whole, attempted to create the opportunities for others, people they don't even know, to be made whole too? What would life look like now?

I want to believe that's what the Kingdom of Heaven would look like. Do you?

Imagination

"The church's central task is an imaginative one. By that I do not mean a fanciful or fictional task, but one in which the human capacity to imagine - to form mental pictures of the self, the neighbor, the world, the future, to envision new realities - is both engaged and transformed. Everyone is born with imagination."

"To apprentice oneself to a child is to learn that the world is full of wonders, a world in which nothing is simply what it seems because everything is packed with endless possibilities of usefulness and meaning. To enter that world, all you have to do is surrender your certainty that you already know what everything is and is for; all you have to do is start over again, assuming nothing and learning to approach every created thing with awe."

-Barbara Brown Taylor in The Preaching Life

Have I lost my imagination? When did that happen? When did I decide that I already knew what everything looked like and what it was for? I have a really amazing story to tell and now I get to start at the beginning again. Fun.

A quiet Swede who roared...

"We are not permitted to chose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours. He who wills adventure will experience it—according to the measure of his courage. He who wills sacrifice will be sacrificed—according to the measure of his purity of heart."

"God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjöld was Secretary General of the United Nations from 1953 until his death in a plane crash on his way to mediate conflict in the Congo on September 18, 1961.

Just what is "Christian Conversatism" trying to conserve?

"Faith is fearful and defensive when it begins to die inwardly, struggling to maintain itself and reaching out for security and guarantees...this pusillanimous* faith usually occurs in the form of an orthodoxy which feels threatened and is therefore more rigid than ever... such a faith tries to protect its 'most sacred things,' God, Christ, doctrine and morality, because it clearly no longer believes that these are sufficiently powerful to maintain themselves." - Jurgen Moltmann in The Crucified God

*lacking in courage and resolution: marked by a contemptible timidity - Webster

Ouch. Take that conservatives!

The church's destiny?

"If we do not attend to God's presence in our midst and bring all our best gifts to serving that presence in the world, we may find ourselves selling tickets to a museum." - Barbara Brown Taylor from The Preaching Life

Amen.

We've got to carry each other!

Who says, the church has nothing left to say?...

Violating My Expectations

The second week of my second year at Luther Seminary has just begun. I'm just now settling back into the rhythm of a life dominated by reading and writing. I'd like to use this blog more effectively this year in processing what I am learning. We'll see if that happens.

One of my most anticipated classes this semester is "Foundations of Biblical Preaching" with one of my preaching idols David Lose. The course is co-taught with Karoline Lewis and both have recently become internet sensations with their commentaries on WorkingPreacher.org.

Over the past few years, I've come to love being in the pulpit. That's not completely true. What I think I really love is the preparation for being in the pulpit. Yes, delivering a good sermon is enjoyable but the real pleasure happens in the preparation.

One of the assigned texts for my preaching class is The Witness of Preaching by Thomas G. Long, professor of preaching at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. In the discussing the biblical witness of preaching, Long encourages us to wrestle with the challenges of our life and then bring those challenges to the texts.

"The text must be allowed to surprise us, even violate our expectations." - Thomas G. Long

I appreciate the reminder that the Gospel is, to it's core, a radical, catalytic story. We need to let the story do the work, not the other way around. If we're faithful to the process, we might just be surprised by what we find.

Needing an ambiguous life.

“The dark ring of ambiguity around life is a crucial ingredient in its richness; it is not something to be dispersed so that we can lead unambiguous lives.” -John D. Caputo

I am not discouraged by the intricacies of a world occupied both by philosophy and theology. It appears that I am, in fact, drawn to these complexities. I struggle to imagine a life of complete knowledge and certainty. Where possibly would be the fun in that? Caputo’s take on the post-modern context for co-habitation of philosophy and theology is indeed hopeful for someone like me. I want to struggle with God’s plan for me every day of my life. The alternative would be much too boring to endure.

Things that make you go "hmmm."

“The theology of liberation means establishing the relationship that exists between human emancipation – in the social, political, and economic orders – and the kingdom of God.” -Gustavo Gutiérrez

I believe that “social, political and economic orders” are created by humanity, certainly by and with what God has given us. So it seems that all we have stands in the way of the freeing act of salvation and yet these are the very same elements that make up our ability to live into the “kingdom of God” here and now. How do we reconcile the tensions of “social, political and economic orders” that both hinder and yet must aid in this endeavor?